The visa pact between India and Pakistan appears unlikely to become operational before the end of the year.

Indians and Pakistanis hoping to travel more freely to each other’s countries under a new visa regime will have to wait a while longer.

The two nations agreed in September to allow the old and young to get visas on arrival and to give multiple-entry and multiple-city visas to business people for the first time.

The agreement, signed in Islamabad, was part of an effort by the two countries to rebuild trust after the attacks on Mumbai in 2008 by Pakistani gunmen, which killed more than 160 people.

The visa pact now appears unlikely to become operational before the end of the year, in the latest sign of the tough road ahead for factions in both countries that want to normalize relations.

Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik and his Indian counterpart, Sushil Kumar Shinde, were supposed to sign a final set of documents this week in New Delhi to make the visa agreement operational.

India instead canceled Mr. Malik’s two-day visit, which was set to start Thursday. K. S. Dhatwali, a spokesman for India’s home ministry, said ministers, including Mr. Shinde, would be busy with Parliament. The winter session starts Thursday.

Some Indian media reports, citing government sources, said New Delhi was reluctant to allow Mr. Malik to visit close to the fourth anniversary of the Mumbai attacks and at a time when Pakistan has yet to prosecute seven militants it has charged with involvement in the killings.

Mr. Dhatwalia denied this was the reason for the delay and said the meeting would be reconvened at a later date. Attempts to reach Pakistani interior ministry officials were not successful.

Whatever the reason, the slow implementation of a relatively modest step is unlikely to rekindle much confidence either side of the border.

There are also murmurs of discomfiture in Pakistan about efforts to free up trade between the nations – another plank of the confidence-building measures.

Pakistan agreed in March to grant India “most-favored nation” trading status by the end of this year. The move would mean Pakistan would drop a small “positive list” of products it can import from India and move instead to a “negative list,” covering only sensitive items such as defense equipment.

India accorded Pakistan MFN status in the 1990s. But Pakistan feared its economy being overrun by its much larger neighbor. Those protectionist sentiments got another airing last week at a Pakistan parliamentary hearing, with some members saying the move by year-end could hurt Pakistan’s agricultural sector.

These developments don’t bode well for efforts to double Pakistan-India trade to $6 billion by 2014. And while smaller issues remain unresolved, talks on other, more thorny, problems such as the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir remain a pipedream.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has promised to visit Pakistan soon to give the peace process a boost. But even this seems unlikely until Pakistan makes progress with its Mumbai trials.